On Meta and Google, better targeting can rescue mediocre creative. On TikTok it cannot.
TikTok is a creative-led channel. The algorithm decides who sees your ad based mostly on whether people watch it, so the account lives or dies on how much good creative you can produce and how fast you can replace it.
We run TikTok for ecommerce brands doing £20K or more per month, measured on contribution margin per order rather than in-platform ROAS.
A TikTok ads agency plans and runs paid campaigns on TikTok: campaign structure, bidding, audience setup, and the creative pipeline that feeds the account. On TikTok the creative side matters more than on most channels, so sourcing creators, briefing them and testing output at volume is usually the bulk of the work rather than an add-on.
Store Surge plans start at £999 per month per platform, as a flat fee rather than a percentage of ad spend. Exact pricing depends on account complexity and how much creative volume the account needs. Creator sourcing and briefing is included in TikTok management.
Some of it does. Audience signals and pixel data transfer reasonably well. Creative does not. An ad cut for the Meta feed usually reads as an advert on TikTok, and the algorithm stops distributing it. The format, pacing and opening seconds need to be built for the platform, not resized for it.
Account structure and tracking fixes show up within the first 2 to 4 weeks. Creative is slower, because it takes several rounds of testing to find angles that hold. Most accounts need 2 to 3 months before the winning creative patterns are clear enough to scale behind with confidence.
It depends on your product and margin, but as a rough guide a TikTok account needs enough budget to test several creative angles at once rather than one at a time. Below that, the algorithm never gets enough signal and the account looks like it is failing when it has simply not been given a fair test.
Yes, exclusively. Every engagement is for a Shopify or WooCommerce store doing £20K or more a month. TikTok behaves differently for ecommerce than it does for apps or lead generation, and the benchmarks we work to come from ecommerce accounts.
No. Creator sourcing and briefing is part of how we run TikTok, because the channel does not work without a steady supply of native-feeling creative. If you already have a creative team or existing creator relationships, we will work with those instead.
Most agencies run TikTok as a smaller version of Meta. Same creative, resized. Same audience logic. Same reporting. It rarely works, because the channel does not behave the same way.
TikTok's algorithm distributes on engagement first. An ad that looks like an ad gets scrolled past, and the platform stops serving it regardless of how good your targeting is. That inverts the usual priority: creative is the lever, and audience settings matter far less than they do elsewhere. Three things we do differently because of that:
We plan creative volume before we plan spend. A TikTok budget you cannot feed with fresh creative will decay within weeks. We work out the production cadence first, then set the budget the account can actually sustain.
We treat TikTok as acquisition, not awareness. It gets held to the same margin standard as Meta and Google. If it cannot acquire customers profitably, we would rather tell you that than report reach and video views.
We reconcile TikTok's numbers against yours. The platform is generous about what it claims credit for. Budget decisions get made on store data, not on the dashboard.
TikTok traffic arrives cold, so the landing page matters more than it does on search. See how we run conversion rate optimisation for ecommerce and email marketing for ecommerce to understand the full-funnel picture.
See how we run conversion rate optimisation for ecommerceSee how we run email marketing for ecommerce
TikTok creative fatigues faster than any other channel. We plan for a testing cadence that assumes fatigue rather than reacting to it, so performance does not fall off a cliff every time a winning ad burns out.
Sourcing creators, writing briefs and turning the output into ads that actually sell. Most TikTok accounts fail because the brand cannot feed them enough creative, not because the targeting is wrong.
Running paid spend behind creator posts and your own organic content, which usually outperforms studio-made ads because it looks native to the feed rather than like an interruption.
Campaign structure that gives the algorithm enough signal to learn, with bidding set against your margin rather than TikTok's default optimisation targets.
See our Google Ads approach →TikTok tends to over-report its own contribution and under-report assisted conversions. We reconcile platform numbers against your actual store data so budget decisions are made on real figures.
TikTok traffic arrives colder and faster than search traffic. If the landing page is built for someone who was already searching for you, the ad spend leaks before it reaches checkout.
Want the full picture across paid media, conversion, and retention?
See our full services overview →We audit the existing TikTok account if there is one, plus your tracking, your current creative library and what your competitors are running in the TikTok Ad Library. The output is a clear view of which creative angles are worth testing first and what the account can realistically support.
We agree a creative production cadence before we set budgets, then build the campaign structure around it. The first 30 days are about getting enough distinct angles live to give the algorithm something to learn from.
Weekly creative reviews, monthly reporting against contribution margin rather than in-platform ROAS, and a rolling pipeline of new angles so the account never runs dry. Winning creative gets varied and re-served rather than retired.
Ecommerce-only focus. Every engagement is on a Shopify or WooCommerce store doing £20K+ per month. We don't run TikTok ads for apps, SaaS or lead-gen, because the creative and the metrics that matter are different.
Ex-ecommerce operators. Our team has run ecommerce ops at £1M to £10M a year brands. We know what moves revenue, what moves CVR but not revenue, and what looks like a win in a dashboard but is not a win in the P&L.
Creative supply is part of the service. Creator sourcing and briefing is included, because a TikTok account without a steady flow of new creative stops working within weeks.
Transparent pricing. Plans start at £999 per month, flat fee per platform rather than a percentage of your ad spend. If we're not the right fit on price, we'd rather you found that out on the website than on a 30-minute sales call.
Most TikTok accounts we take over have the same handful of problems. If any of these sound familiar, they are usually fixable:
Meta creative resized for TikTok, which the algorithm treats as an advert and stops serving
Too few creative angles running at once, so the algorithm never gets enough signal to learn
No production cadence, so the account runs dry a few weeks after launch
Judging TikTok on in-platform ROAS alone, which the platform reports generously
Treating TikTok as an awareness channel, so it never gets held to an acquisition target
Creator content commissioned once as a campaign rather than as an ongoing supply
Budget scaled behind a winning ad faster than the creative pipeline can replace it
Landing pages built for search traffic, which colder TikTok traffic bounces off
Written by Sam Park, Founder at Store Surge.
Sam Park has run ecommerce growth and paid media for brands across fashion, beauty and homeware, with managed budgets in the eight figures.
Plans start at £999 per month. You choose which platforms you want managed, and the fee is fixed per platform rather than taken as a percentage of your ad spend.
That matters when you scale. On a percentage model, doubling your media budget doubles what you pay us, whether or not the work doubles. On a flat fee it does not. You can add or remove platforms as your plan changes, without being penalised for investing more in what is already working.
A single in-house paid media manager typically costs £35,000 to £50,000 a year before national insurance, pension, software and recruitment fees. That buys you one person, competent on one or two platforms, who takes holiday and eventually leaves.
Store Surge gives you senior strategic direction plus specialist operators, including the creative sourcing TikTok depends on, for less than the cost of that one hire.
See full ecommerce PPC pricingMost engagements start with a focused discovery and audit, typically 2 to 4 weeks, before moving into a longer retained or project-based relationship. We don't do retainers for the sake of retainers.